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integration and implementation of technology-focused business solutions

Survive the IT budget blues with Oracle APEX

January 15th, 2013

It's a challenging time for technology departments everywhere. Tightened budgets leave less and less money to support business critical applications at the same time that users and management are asking for new features. It seems like a scenario where everyone loses… but there's hope.

For many organizations, Oracle's Application Express (APEX) is the perfect solution to modernize applications without busting the IT budget.

What's APEX?

APEX is a web application development tool provided by Oracle. It's free to anyone using one of Oracle's database editions (Including the also free, Oracle Database Express). It can be used to migrate existing applications to the web or to build completely new applications from scratch.

Summing up APEX in one word, it's fast. Oracle built APEX with a focus on quick, easy development, rapid prototyping, and high performance. When we develop solutions using APEX it allows us to spend less time coding and more time getting to the root of business problems – building applications that save you money and perfectly match your needs.

An example: One of our customers, Simmons Global, recently came to us looking for help with their vendor certification process. Using APEX, we were able to quickly develop and implement a solution at a fraction of the cost of similar offerings from companies like IBM or Microsoft.

APEX's rapid prototyping gave us something to show management early on and helped us get useful feedback so that the end product matched what Simmons needed.

Moving to the web

Supporting proprietary client software is a huge cost for businesses running older applications. Even when businesses can afford to retain staff with the skills they need to keep their older applications running, they often can't find those people.

Using APEX to update and replace legacy applications removes these types of costs and headaches. The applications built with APEX are web-based. They run inside the web browser and don't require any proprietary software like Microsoft Access to run on the end user's computer.

Best of all, if you have existing development staff, they should be able to get up and running using APEX with a minimal learning curve, because APEX uses web standards like HTML and CSS as well as the easy-to-learn PL/SQL language. Even the development environment is web-driven. Everything is done in the browser.

A recipe for success

IT projects are notorious for their high failure rates and the last thing a cash-strapped business needs is a costly failure. That's why our customers and internal developers get so excited about APEX.

The low cost of development and solid foundation it provides allows us to build solutions that help businesses reduce overall costs and risks. APEX lets us solve problems instead of being a drag on the business with drawn-out development cycles and costly on-going support.

If you'd like to find out more about how APEX can be used to save your business time and money, contact us at 405-285-2500 or sales@lsgsolutions.com.